Jackie Bird: Delaying answers piles insult on terrible injury

LIKE Lockerbie’s Pan Am 103, flight number MH370 has become instantly recognisable as a short-form for tragedy on a huge scale. What is also a
horror story is the manner in which the relatives of passengers have been treated.

Grieving relatives of passengers on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 leave a hotel hall at after being told the news that the plane plunged into Indian Ocean in Beijing

As it’s unfolded, the story of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane read like a complex, if somewhat unbelievable, Hollywood thriller.

Like Lockerbie’s Pan Am 103, flight number MH370 has become instantly recognisable as a short-form for tragedy on a huge scale. What is also a
horror story is the manner in which the relatives of passengers have been treated.

Hysterical
with grief, the latest insult came this week when they were informed by
text message that there was no hope for their loved ones.

The
same friendly, expectant beep that usually heralds all sorts of inconsequential information was the only warning they got of the worst possible news.

The airline defended themselves by saying it was the only way to inform hundreds of people simultaneously – but was it really?

Was it
beyond the company to use a few hundred caring staff members to make a call or a visit, or even hire in some sensitive support?

Thankfully,
grieving family members get complete support in the event of tragedies in this country – or do they? Earlier this month relatives of 16 men killed in a helicopter crash in the North Sea described a five-year wait
for a fatal accident inquiry as “intolerable”.

A
detailed investigation into such an occurrence isn’t something to be rushed but five years seems an outrageous amount of time.

It’s a situation that’s not infrequent. Whether it involves multiple loss of life or a single workplace death, questions surrounding the delays in holding these inquiries have been taken up by politicians, unions and even by lawyers and judges themselves.

You can bet that if it affected any one of us we’d be outraged too.

Apart from putting the grieving process on almost intolerable hold, the ramifications of such long-term delays are profound.

Do we seriously believe that anyone’s detailed memory of an event is enhanced by a gap stretching to years?

That becomes crucial when you take into consideration that the conclusions of
these judicial investigations often include recommendations to prevent accidents happening again.

Why should years pass before laws are changed or restrictions are put in place that could save other lives?

MSP
Patricia Ferguson, who’s planning a private members bill in the Scottish parliament to address the criticism of these inquiries, summed it up when she said delays were “excluding, exasperating and angering families”.

They might not be exhibiting the public grief of the relatives of flight MH370 but they are suffering just the same.

It wasn’t always like this. In January 1971, 66 fans died in the Ibrox disaster – an inquiry was held the next month.

Recently a family waited six-and-a-half years for the results of an inquiry into the death of their father in hospital.

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